-CaravanMagazine.in The South Asia Collective, a group of human-rights activists and organisations, recently published “The South Asia State of Minorities Report 2020: Minorities and Shrinking Civic Space” by the South Asia Collective. The report examines minority rights and the narrowing of space for human-rights defenders in light of increasing majoritarianism across the region. Its chapters, on Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, conclude that three basic freedoms—the constitutional...

-Scroll.in An excerpt from the introduction to Yadav’s new book, ‘Making Sense Of Indian Democracy: Theory as Practice’. That was foreshadowed by Congress’ victory in the wake of the Sikh massacre and followed by Modi’s victories in the Gujarat assembly elections, held in the wake of the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002. We should have known about the dark side of Indian democracy. At any rate, we are no longer now looking at...

-The Telegraph 'It is on the verge of losing status as a democracy due to shrinking space for media and civil society' More people are living under autocracies than under democracies across the world and India’s “steep decline” on democratic traditions despite electoral politics is a contributing factor to the global surge in autocratisation. India has also been put among the top 10 autocratising countries. This is one of the conclusions of a study...

-Hindustan Times The Democracy Index referred to the changes in Jammu and Kashmir and the controversial implementation of the (NRC) in Assam. India dropped 10 places in the Democracy Index’s global ranking to 51st place, with the survey describing the erosion of civil liberties in the country as the primary cause of the democratic regression. The Democracy Index - prepared by Economist Intelligence Unit, the research and analysis division of The Economist Group...

-The Hindu If big money entirely funds elections in a secretive way, democracy as we know it will not exist The recent disclosures that the Election Commission (EC) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had expressed reservations about the Electoral Bonds scheme highlight the importance of this issue. In 2017, the then RBI Governor wrote to the then Finance Minister that “allowing any entity other than the central bank to issue...